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Tokushu Inamura
Tokushu Inamura is a Designer/Engineer, appointed as AssistantProfessor of Design Strategy at the Faculty of Design and Center
for Designed Futures of Kyushu University. Current research
focuses on Post Human Centered Design and Circular Design. He iscurrently teaching in Strategic Design at post graduate level, andDesign Futures at undergraduate level, as well as engaged at theRobert Huang Entrepreneurship Center. He engages in praxis to
educate internationally minded transdisciplinary teams to become
strategic and holistic innovators. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand,
he has lived in the US, Switzerland and the UK, he currently
resides in Fukuoka City Japan.

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Design Praxis with the Kingfisher and Bacteria;
The River as Place for Post Human-Centered
Design learning
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to unpack and question theanthropocentricity of our interactions with public place and how
we might be able to foster learning to overcome dominant modesof praxis. The article focuses on rivers as an example of opportune
places for Post Human-Centered Design of informal education anddecentralized co-design of culture. The surrounding literature arepresented, leading to pathways to radical inclusion of more-thanhuman concerns and discusses the interactions that can emerge
through case study on the Naka river in Fukuoka, Japan.

Keywords: More-than-human, Non-human, Inclusion, Learning,
Anthropocene, Post Human-Centered Design, River, Personhood.

Radical inclusion of the self
Approaches to more-than-human (MTH) concerns can be
explained started from questioning that notion of the “user” indesign. Given that the human body, or human biome contains
bacterial cell counts that are approximately match or exceed thenumber of human cells, estimated at a ratio of 1.3:1(Sender &Milo, 2016), the non-human is a fundamental aspect of ourexistence. Our anthropocentric notions that underpin Design
therefore are a simplification at best, and even when considering
one “user”, radical inclusion starts from an understanding that thehuman is a minority within the body of MTH concerns.

The body and biosphere

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Taking the body and it’s health as a starting point, themultispecies self can be expanded. Sariola & Butcher highlightthat Antimicrobial resistance for example has been framed in a
multispecies context through the concept of One health, an
expansion that looks to beyond human health to pets and nature;in practice so far, such attempts have come up short in terms oftaking a MTH approach seriously (2022). So, it can be said that weare at a nascent stage of MTH research.
The shortfalls are evident elsewhere, the wedding cakemodel in fig. 1, developed by Folke et al. (2016), arranges the
SDG’s so that they are layered and concentric, according toeconomy, society and biosphere. The visual strength of this model
is to highlight that economy and society sit atop the biospherethat supports it. However, when seen this way, non-human goals
take 13 out of 17 goals. Clearly our current anthropocentric biases
persist.

Figure 1: The wedding cake model. Credit: Azote for Stockholm ResilienceCentre, Stockholm University (CC BY 4.0)

In the 2014 Manifesto, Horton et al. present a Manifesto
based on the concept of planetary health. With an even broader
scope than One health, planetary health extends out to consider
the biosphere, but still with human health as the central concern.
An important factor highlighted by the planetary health report a
key point, that anthropocentric dominance has allowed for a lack53

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of empathy, (and imagination of the other) to use simplified
economic metrics over the actual health of the planet (Whitmeeet.al., 2015). Wendt has argued that empathy employed by thedesign fields does not include the ecological thought necessary forsustainability (2017), however in the case of the planetary healthframework, such empathy extends beyond that of homo sapiens
and is a matter of defining empathy as inclusive of non-humanbeings. Haraway and Begelke have thoroughly discussed thenotion of companion species (2003), where mutual empathic
responses between human and non-human are co-dependent.
{For a concise review on related concepts of posthumanism anddesign that exceed the focus on this article see Forlano (2017)}

Take me to the river
The limits of human-centered design and it’s need to expand
beyond it’s anthropocentric roots have been raised by Thomas etal., and highlighted the example of personhood granted to theWhanganui river in the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims
Settlement) Act 2017 as one of pertinence. (2017)
Whanganuifollows

after

the

Te Urewera Act 2014,asgroundbreaking examples of rights of nature, where personhood
was granted to the national park (O’Donnell, 2018). These cases
impacted the granting personhood in of Uttarakhand India to theGanges, Yakuma rivers and the Himalayas Glaciers and bodies ofwater that flow into the respective rivers. (Gellers, 2021). The
Ganges and Yakuma were overturned by the Supreme Court,
however the Himalayan Glaciers have been not (Talbot-Jones &O’Donnell, 2021). These can be said to be the emerging grounds
for conflict and innovation in going beyond human-centered
design. The waters have cultural importance beyond the utility for
power generation or fresh water use. The Ganges, or Ganga is“widely acclaimed for its great cultural, spiritual, economic andecological significance, which far transcends the national borders
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and boundaries” (Kumar, 2017), therefore the rivers are cultural
institution of extensive scope. In the case of the Whanganui, thelocal saying is I am the river, and the river is me (Ko au te awa,
Ko te awa ko au in Te Reo Maori language). Such worldviews
clearly differ to the frameworks of Human-nonhuman in theconventional design space as discussed by Thomas et al. (2017).
Empathy for the river, is in this case a tangible conception, as it
captures the river as a living entity, including the animals, plants,
water itself and the land. As Gellers puts it “the tenets of Earthsystem law could advance a radically inclusive interpretation ofcommunities of justice (2021)”. We can say that radical inclusion
in design is wickedly intertwined with MTH concerns. Though
there are early examples of praxis being shared such as the
agricultural work of Loh( 2020), there is much to be explored. In
the stages of transition, still nascent, cycles of unlearning theanthropocentric and learning of post human-centered praxis areneeded. But, with the integral and embodied nature of post
anthropocentric designing, places and spaces of learning equallyrequire critical inquiry.

River as more than human places of learning
In relation to MTH learning, conventional institutions such as
museums and zoos have their place. However, the river andassociatedcommonshavecharacteristics

for

post

human-

centered design pedagogy. As Adams & Branco discuss, Parks andsimilar places of lived experiences, not afforded by brick andmorter institutions, and can “facilitate experiences with naturethat are unparalleled in the classroom” (2017). Such connection
to nature itself has shown to be intrinsically valuable (Mayer,2004). In addition, the rivers connect the mountain to the sea.
Travelling through biodiverse ecologies, mountainous terrain torural and urban human settlements they integrate with humansettlements
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terrain.

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environmental science, Tanaka has led such research connecting
the head waters to the sea through the Headwater to Ocean or
H20 studies (2013), as well as Forest- Sato- Sea (Sato refers toJapanese rural settlements). The research assesses biodiversity
and water quality but also connects to bottom-up environmental
movements, a representative case being the initiative lead bycoastal fishermen named ‘The Sea is Longing for the Forest'. The
praxisoverlaps

scientificresearch

andvernacular

cultureeducating participants in ecological learnings as well as deliveringsocietal mobilization (2016). The rivers allow a place for learningthat transcend institutional boundaries, and foster communities oflearning beyond the formal/informal border. Such open praxis isrich for exploration. In following section I will outline relevant
praxis that I have facilitated as a design researcher.

Designing for and with the Kingfisher
The Naka river flows through Fukuoka city to the Hakata
Bay, and is the closes river to the School of Design at Kyushu
University where I am based. The river has been one field where I
developed my design praxis. I have undertanken multiple design
explorations

as

part

of

undergraduate

and

post

graduate

education teaching, as well as post human-centered design
research. One such case is the Global Goals Jam, a two day design
jam to tackle the SDGs started in 2016 beginning when the United
Nations Development Program (Global Goals Jam, n.d.). The
Fukuoka instance has inclusive design and universal design
running through its veins. With roots in the Challenge Workshops
pioneered by Julia Cassim at the Helen Hamlyn Centre (Dong,
2013), it was originally in connection with Universal Fukuoka City
initiative that promotes Universal Design in the city. In 2016 the
Global Goals Jam was combined as a joint event.
The 2018 Global Goals Jam in Fukuoka took place over theperiod of56

November 29th (Thu) -30th (Fri) . I was co-director,

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alongside Yanfang Zhang and included Mark Watson as workshop
adviser visiting from Australia as regular Jam organizer. The
theme for the year was decided as Water and the City, focusing on
Goals 11 and 14, partially in reaction to the torrential rains
experienced in the region (KIDNEXT, 2018). Guest speakers
includedmembers

from

the

local

chapterofMizbering(anationwide social design initiative started by the Ministry of Land,
Infrastructure, and Tourism to develop riverside activities inpartial collaboration with Prominent Ad-agency Hakuhodo among
others). The Project received a Good Design Award in 2018 (GoodDesign, 2018). A Local government official from the city also
shared issue to do with the sewer system.
There were four teams that formed with diverse members
including local students, exchange students, professional from thepublic. Of the four one team looked to find stakeholders along the
Nakagawa river.
The team looked lost about how to approach this topic
during the jam. As a facilitator, I encouraged the team to go to theriver, despite the lack of time being a tangible factor, and theteam and I walked to the closest point of access to the Nakagawa.
The team talked with people along the river, but one person stoodout. There was a photographer taking pictures near the river.
Through interviewing the photographer (A), it was revealed that A
was a birdwatcher. He possessed knowledge of the habitat ofbirds, and was particularly interested in the kingfisher (Kawasemi
in Japanese). He identified that the kingfisher needed trees
overhanging the river, and that such trees were a nuisance fromthe perspective of routine maintenance, since they catch river
trash,

anddrop

vegetation

into

the

water.

Based

on

this

interaction, the team looked to opportunities to design around forthe kingfisher. The final outputs of the team were an overall
conceptual vision for a kingfisher-inspired river design as seen in
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Fig 2. This included ideas and prototypes of river cleaning (Fig 3.),shelter for people and sharing kingfisher habitat while improving
the rivers health overall.

Figure 2: Kingfisher ( Kawasemi) Project vision produced during GGJ 2018

Figure 3: Physical prototype of woven river waste catcher

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The team members were from various backgrounds but none ofthem from a zoological or ecological specialization. By exploring
the river they were able to come across a member of riversidesociety, in this case a photographer and bird lover. His passion
and empathy for the kingfisher sparked the team to conceptualize
and stretch beyond anthropocentricity within the short jam
session.

The Kingfisher inspires the future of the river
I have shared the documented outputs from this project, as
well as example from the Whanganui river with participatory
networks of praxis. Directly inspired from such results I havecontinued to engage with the river and joined to form the
Nakagawa Future Conference ( Nakagawa mirai kaigi), a bottom
up organization to imagine and develop the future of the
Nakagawa river front officially established in 2021. Currently theorganizationisgatheringcompanies,

local

government

andcitizens to imagine the future of the river, and develop practicalprojects. The organization has applied and gained funding from
the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism to conduct placemaking in the river area and form a vibrant community. Suchpraxis has led to planning stages of new collaborations with alocal primary school to teach MTH approaches to co-design on the
Nakagawa river, with an eye to observing with a nonhumanperspective, such as fish and bird point of view, to understandnature and have a tangible understanding of risks in relation tobodies of water. In parallel, I have collaborated in a post humancentered design education project in Kyoto, where students
designed for MTH concerns in the Kamo river, these results havebeen documented by Ito (2021).

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Implications
The

transition

toanthropocentricity

from

the

individualtoplanetary scale was explored through the lens of one health andplanetary health frameworks. I have argued that radical inclusionof the MTH can be rethought from the individual, considering the
human

body

is

a

multispecies

vessel.

In

discussing

theinadequacies of current nascent efforts, and limits of human
centered approaches, the granting of rights of nature, in the formof personhood

is apowerfulidea. Theriver

describedbyindigenous Maori as inseparable from the self, links with the ideaof the multispecies reconceptualization of the individual in design,where micro and macro are interconnected and intertwined.
Similarly, I have argued that such conceptions of the river arethemselves cultural institutions that provide opportunities forlearningthatisneededtotransitionfromanthropocentric

thinking, and that such learning cannot occur in the confines of
traditional institutional bounds. The nature of rivers as connectors
from the Mountains to the sea make them places for learning thattranscend dogmatic anthropocentric structures. Through the casestudy of the Nakagawa and the Kingfisher, I have demonstrated
early clinical results, highlighting the potential of rivers as placesof learning and praxis that are wonderfully inseparable from thecommunity of learners.

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